Many recent manipulations of gene expression involve the introduction of transfected genes (transgenes) to confer some novel property upon, or to alter some intrinsic property of, mammalian cells or organisms. The efficacy of such manipulations is often impaired by such problems as the inability to control the chromosomal site of transgene integration; or the inability to control the number of copies of a transgene that integrate at the desired chromosomal site; or by difficulties in controlling the level, temporal characteristics, or tissue distribution of transgene expression; or by the difficulty of modifying the structure of transgenes once they are integrated into mammalian chromosomes.
Transgenes are often introduced into mammalian cells or organisms to determine which components of a transgene are required for specific qualitative or quantitative alterations of the host system. Since both chromosomal position and copy number are major determinants of transgene function, the usefulness of these analyses is limited because current techniques for efficiently introducing transgenes into mammalian hosts result in the insertion of a variable number of transgene copies at random chromosomal positions. It is, therefore, difficult (if not impossible) to compare the effects of one transgene to those of another if the two transgenes occupy different chromosomal positions and are present in the genome at different copy numbers. Considerably more refined analyses would be possible if one could routinely introduce single copies of a variety of transgenes into a defined chromosomal position.
The spatial or temporal characteristics of transgene expression is difficult to control in intact organisms. The restricted expression of transgenes is potentially of great interest, as this technique can be employed for a variety of therapeutic applications, e.g., for the selective interruption of a defective gene, for the alteration of expression of a gene which is otherwise over-expressed or under-expressed, for the selective introduction of a gene whose product is desirable in the host, for the selective removal or disruption of a gene whose expression is no longer desired in the host, and the like.
Transgene expression is typically governed by a single set of control sequences, including promoters and enhancers which are physically linked to the transgenes (i.e., cis-acting sequences). Considerably greater expression control could be achieved if transgene expression could be placed under the binary control of these cis-acting sequences, plus an additional set of sequences that were not physically linked to the transgenes (i.e., trans-acting sequences). A further advantage would be realized if the transient activity of these trans-acting functions resulted in a stable alteration in transgene expression. In this manner, it would be possible, for example, to introduce into a host a transgene whose expression would have lethal or deleterious effects if it was constitutively expressed in all cells. This would be accomplished by delaying the expression of the transgene to a specific time or developmental stage of interest, or by restricting the expression of the transgene to a specific subset of the cell population.
It is currently difficult (if not impossible) to precisely modify the structure of transgenes once they have been introduced into mammalian cells. In many applications of transgene technology, it would be desirable to introduce the transgene in one form, and to then be able to modify the transgene in a defined manner. By this means, transgenes could be activated or inactivated or the sequences which control transgene expression could be altered by either removing sequences present in the original transgene or by inserting additional sequences into the transgene.
Previous descriptions of recombinase-mediated rearrangement of chromosomal sequences in Drosophila and mammalian cells have not directly addressed the question of whether site-specific recombinases could routinely create a functional translational reading frame. Moreover, the reported efficiency of the prior art recombinase system, in the only other description of site-specific recombination in mammalian cells reported to date (based on Cre recombinase, described by Sauer and Henderson, Nucl. Acids Res. 17:147, 1989) appears to be quite low.